‘Name-dropping the name of the toilet’

Ah, the vernacular of the property listing. This piece from the New York Timesreminds me of searching for apartments in Boston in the late 90s. It was before cell phone use was prevalent, the market was booming, and something affordable for a young, unemployed person like myself was almost impossible to find. I remember spending frantic days cris-crossing that crazy city, making calls from pay phones and gripping a folded, beat-up copy of the classifieds in my hand. My roommate and I learned quickly the euphemisms of rental agent parlance: “Cozy” = small. “Garden” = basement.

The New York Times piece breaks it down: Real estate brokers have just a few sentences and a couple of pictures to grab the attention of buyers scouring the Internet for their dream home, or at least a nice enough place in which they can fit all their furniture. Some agents use verbal flourishes to distinguish themselves; others are enthusiastic about the caps-lock button. But always, the goal is to do the best with what you have.

There is clearly the game of weighing what to tell and what to leave out. Say too much about the faults of a listing, and a prospective buyer or renter won’t even come and look. Say too little, and they will be pissed off when they arrive to find out the view from the windows is a brick wall.